C. elegans is a nematode (roundworm) that is known as the first multicellular eukaryote to have its entire genome sequenced. It has approximately 19-20,000 protein-encoding genes incorporated in 100,258,171 base pairs of DNA. It has physiological systems found in other animals such as mice and humans. C. elegans is ideal for transgenic experimentation because it is sufficiently small in size and reproduces rapidly allowing it to be raised in large numbers in wells of a standard well plate containing its bacterial food source such as E. coli. It is transparent so its every cell is visible under the microscope. Scientists can view its entire 2-3 weeks life cycle from the fertilized egg to the adult worm. In 1998, it was discovered that injection of double stranded RNA into C. elegans leads to interference. Thereafter, it was discovered that feeding C. elegans with bacteria engineered to produce double stranded RNA also could induce a robust RNA interference response. These discoveries and the knowledge of the complete genomic sequence of C. elegans made it possible to conduct rapid study and experimentation of gene function, both on a single gene level and on a global level. See Worm Book at http://www.wormbook.org.
In light of the foregoing, it is not surprising that C. elegans is often used in transgenic research worldwide. Unfortunately, the cultivation of transgenic C. elegans is labor intensive requiring daily feeding, cleaning, and imaging. In most labs, these steps are manually processed by lab technicians which limits throughput. The present invention overcomes this throughput problem by providing an automated system for cultivating transgenic C. elegans. The system provides significantly higher throughput while reduces the number of man-hours required to cultivate transgenic C. elegans. 